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Earlier this month, Kaiser Health News reporter Bram Sable-Smith told the tales of people who had searched for health insurance online last fall and ended up snared by an unscrupulous health care sharing ministry selling illusory health coverage. These shoppers had clicked on "lead generator" websites advertising health insurance, which in turn referred them to unscrupulous brokers selling the junk product.
Such stories are not new and all too common, but this one caught my eye because I myself reported back in March that web search for health insurance had been substantially cleaned up in advance of Open Enrollment last fall. Search for "health insurance" or "health insurance [any state]," I wrote, and either HealthCare.gov (the federal exchange) or the appropriate state-based exchange will top the results.
A major driver of the improvement, I wrote, was a change in policy at Google, which unfolded in two states. First, in May 2020, Google a posted a policy update stating that the company would l no longer allow ads for documents and/or services that can be obtained directly from a government or a delegated provider (a company that has been officially entrusted or assigned by a government). Then, in June 2021, Google applied this policy to health insurance, stating in an update that entities advertising health insurance must be a licensed provider (e.g., broker) registered to provide ACA-compliant plans in all locations where they do business. I was told that a parallel policy for web search was implemented shortly afterward, and I noted Yahoo and Bing appear to have followed suit.
While I extensively tested the basic premise (ACA exchanges will top search results for health insurance), I'm sorry to report both that I apparently missed some loopholes and that the search landscape has more recently degenerated. It is no longer the case that an ACA exchange will reliably top search results for "health insurance," alone or with a state name added (e.g., "health insurance Oklahoma"). I am not sure what's changed and why, and will look for answers. But a few notes:
- Search results from Google's Android search engine are worse than Google results from a PC: the "ad" markings are harder to pick up on a phone, and ads unfailingly top the results in searches conducted on my droid.
- Though "lead generators" cater to brokers, and sell the names/contact info they collect to brokers who then phone/email the prospects, a lot of lead generators have gotten themselves licensed as brokers in their own right, fulfilling a Google requirement. Perhaps some have done so to adapt to Google's June 2021 policy update.
- My own search history may have partially misled me prior to the last post. Search results are worse when I search from incognito mode, or from my wife's Chrome account. Then again, Yahoo and Bing results were clean when I looked in March, and those engines wouldn't have my search history (unless it transfers over since I was searching from Chrome?) Also, I have a long history of checking search results for health insurance, and those results were a mess until some time in 2021. There was a real improvement.
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